NKorean leader offers to meet SKorean president

10 February 2018

Those on their feet included South Korean President Moon Jae-in and the two senior North Koreans sent to the opening ceremonies - Kim Yo Jong, the sister of leader Kim Jong Un, and Kim Yong Nam, North Korea's nominal head of state.

But Jung said even one win by the team will be "very meaningful" news.

Moon said it was the U.S.' firm stance that contributed to North Korea's participation in the Olympics and inter-Korean talks.

Speaking at his swearing in ceremony past year, Moon said he would be willing to travel to Pyongyang "under the right conditions", adding that "for peace on the Korean Peninsula, I will do everything that I can do".

Within days of the request, the roughly 150 staff of the four-star Inje Speedium Hotel & Resort were attending sessions on North Korean words and manners, one of which was taught by a professor who used to teach defectors from the North.

A selfie taken by smiling North and South Korean skaters and posted on Instagram illustrates yet another moment of reconciliation between the divided nations, whose decades-long animosities could easily erupt again after the Pyeongchang Olympics.

Kim Jong Un has invited South Korean President Moon Jae-in to North Korea for talks in the first major development to stem from North Korea's participation in the Olympics, Moon's office announced Saturday.

Sources told CNN that the sending of ceremonial head of state Kim Yong Nam and Kim's sibling Kim Yo Jong reads as more of a symbolic act than any concrete diplomatic initiative by North Korea.

Kim Yo Jong, 30, was elected to the politburo a year ago, but remains little known outside North Korea and has not appeared much in public until now.

The North has sent almost 500 people to the Pyeongchang Games, including officials, athletes, artists and also a 230-member state-trained cheering group after the Koreas agreed to a series of conciliatory gestures for the games.

As for sharing Moon's box with the North Koreans, the officials said they knew in advance who was going to be in Moon's box to watch the opening ceremony. The top US envoy to the Games, Vice President Pence, sat stone-faced as the crowd erupted in cheers for the unified Korean team - showing the rift between Washington and its South Korean ally on how to deal with the North's nuclear and military ambitions.

But during the Olympic's elaborate opening ceremonies, Pence found himself in an awkward position. "A bunch of journalists were chasing us so security took us outside so we could get to our seats", the fake Kim added.

Throw in there the accusations that South Korea has had to arrange huge payouts for past meetings, and that these earlier encounters, while producing indelible images, have done little to slow North Korea's pursuit of nuclear weapons. They said Pence could have opted to sit with the United States delegation and avoided the box that included the North Koreans.